Tuesday, 25 March 2014

It has been an annoyingly long time since I have posted in this blog. It is a shame but the main reason is that I haven't had time to read gothy art books nor there have been any great exhibitions I'd consider suitable as a topic in this blog. But now I have something!

This art book titled HR GIGER is of coarse about HR Giger's art works, from movie props (Alien films) to drawings and statues. It was published in the beginning of 21st century though oddly enough I did not find my copy on the webpage of the publisher. There was some other art book about Giger but not the one I have in my shelf. The one I have can be found in Amazon, new ones are about 10 dollars and used ones cost almost nothing! If you have some petty cash, I strongly recommend to get this book since the pictures are amazing and it gives the reader a peek into such a wide range of Giger's work. :)

In this book there is no one author. The whole concept of this art book is HR Giger's, but there are texts made by several other people. For example the preface of the book is by Leslie Barany, a personal friend and agent of Giger.

What I really like about this HR GIGER is that the content is compartmentalized in logical sections. After the preface the next part is titled "HR Giger and the Soul of the Twentieth Century". The text is written by Stanislav Grof who to my taste makes a really good presentation of Giger's art and why Grof considers Giger a visionary. Grof places Giger and his work into several contexts, he refers to the psychological aspects of Giger's work and also how they reflect the 20th century, the rapid technological development and cultural change.

All texts are in English, French and Germany. It also gives some inside information about how the Giger Museum was established and what kind of misfortunes happened but what is really nice is that the book does not dwell on those mishaps, all texts are compact and therefore give room for the most important thing; the photos of artwork by Giger.

Thanks to this book, I really want to visit the Giger Museum! :) Yesterday I actually checked what would it cost to fly to Gruyères, Switzerland (where the museum is) but alas, there were no flight routes from Finland!